"If you're a Java developer interested in leveraging open source tools to build multitier applications, Larne Pekowsky can help--this book will walk you all the way through development, build, testing, and deployment. This soup-to-nuts coverage is a rare find." --Angela Yochem, author of J2EE Applications and BEA WebLogic Server, Second Edition (Prentice Hall, 2004) The Jakarta project consists of many powerful open source tools for the Java platform, but most lack tutorials or clear online help documentation. Apache Jakarta and Beyond is the definitive guide to using Jakarta and other Java open source tools to develop Web applications more efficiently and effectively. In this example-packed book, readers will find An introduction to the philosophy behind the Jakarta project Details on many ready-to-use Java toolkits, including Ant, JUnit, Cactus, Log4J, POI, Tomcat, James, Struts, and more In-depth guidelines on how to develop with multiple toolkits A guide to splitting work along lines of "what is available" and "what must be written" Best practices for development, such as the model/view/controller paradigm Numerous examples that can serve as templates for readers' own projects The accompanying CD-ROM contains templates and complete code examples from the book. Whether you are developing client applications, Web applications, or Web services, Apache Jakarta and Beyond will help you use existing code to simplify the task at hand.

Table of Contents:
Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction.     On Tools.     On Open Source.     The Apache Software Foundation and the Jakarta Project.     On Application Development.     Further Reading. 2. Ant.     Introduction to Ant.     Dependencies.     Sets of Files as Task Arguments.     Global Variables.     Paths.     Properties.     Command-Line Arguments.     Built-In Tasks.     Creating New Tasks.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 3. Eclipse.     Getting Started with Eclipse.     Using Ant with Eclipse.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 4. Testing with JUnit.     An Introduction to Automated Testing.     JUnit-A Testing Framework.     More on JUnit.     How and What to Test.     Integrating JUnit with Ant.     Summary. 5. Testing Web Sites with HTTPUnit.     An Introduction to HTTPUnit.     A More Sophisticated Example.     Testing with ServletRunner.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 6. Further Web Testing with Jakarta Cactus.     An Introduction to Cactus.     Writing and Running Cactus Tests.     Using Cactus with Eclipse.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 7. Stress Testing with Jakarta JMeter.     Using JMeter.     Distributed Testing.     More Sophisticated Test Plans.     Using JMeter with Ant.     How to Stress Test.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 8. Simplifying Bean Development with BeanUtils.     Introduction to BeanUtils.     Simple Properties.     Indexed Properties.     Mapped Properties.     Nested Properties.     Converters.     Adding New Converters.     Dynamic Beans.     Enhancing DynaBeans.     Summary. 9. Traversing Hierarchical Data with JXPath.     Introduction to XPath.     Using JXPath.     Setting Values.     Creating New Structures.     A Few Notes on Defining New Contexts.     Summary. 10. Database Tools.     Hsqldb.     Pooling Connections with DBC.     Mapping Databases to Objects with OJB.     Using OJB.     Retrieving Data.     More Sophisticated Queries.     Lazy Evaluation.     Related Tools.     Hiding Persistence from Applications.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 11. Logging.     The Java.util.logging Package.     Log4j.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 12. Configuring Program Options.     Jakarta CLI.     Jakarta Digester.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 13. Working with Text 1: Regular Expressions.     Regular Expressions.     ORO Regular Expressions.     Jakarta Regexp.     The JDK1.4 Pattern Matching Classes.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 14. Working with Text 2: Searching.     Creating Indices.     Using Indices.     Indexing Web Pages.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 15. Creating Office Documents with POI.     POIFS.     Excel.     Creating Spreadsheets.     Templating.     Word.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 16. Scripting.     Running BeanShell.     The BeanShell Language.     Functions.     Implementing Interfaces.     Full Java Compatibility.     Calling BeanShell from Java.     Motivation for Scripting.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 17. Tomcat.     Starting Tomcat.     A Tour of Tomcat.     Creating a Web Application.     Security.     Realms.     Encryption and Server Validation.     Client Certificates.     Certificate-Based Authentication.     Global Resources.     Web-Based Management and Administration.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 18. The Standard Tag Library.     Tag Libraries.     Tags with Bodies.     Dynamic Attributes in Tags.     Displaying Expressions.     Formatting Output.     Iteration in a Page.     Conditionally Including Sections of a Page.     Browser Detection.     Combining Tags.     Selecting between Multiple Choices.     The SQL Tags.     The XML Tags.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 19. Struts.     Some Common Controller Tasks.     Struts: An Application Toolkit.     Using Struts.     Simplifying Form Beans with the Validator.     Eliminating Form Beans.     The Pros and Cons of Struts.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. 20. Cocoon.     Building and Configuring Cocoon.     Using Cocoon.     Accessing Databases.     Writing to Databases.     The Pros and Cons of Cocoon.     Beyond This Book.     Summary. Appendix A. Index.